Trump called for 'belated impeachment' of Obama even as lawyers argue against his trial since he's ex POTUS
Former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial for "inciting an insurrection" is underway with the Senate voting that it is constitutional despite calls from Trump's lawyers and some Republicans to dismiss the proceedings. A core argument made by Trump's legal team and his supporters is that the trial is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. Trump's second impeachment lawyer, David Schoen said, "Presidents are impeachable because presidents are removable. Former presidents are not, because they cannot be removed. The Constitution is clear." He added, "Trial by the Senate sitting as a court of impeachment is reserved for the president of the United States, not a private citizen who used to be president of the United States."
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However, while Trump was in office himself, he had called for the impeachment of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who had served the maximum two terms of presidency, as recent as last February.
On February 10, 2020. during his rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Trump said that Obama should be impeached for saying Americans could keep their doctors under Obamacare. He said, "Remember President Obama? 'You can keep your plan, you can keep.. 28 times.. your doctor?' That didn't turn out very good."
He repeated the sentiment a few days later when he campaigned for his reelection in Colorado Springs, saying, "Impeach Obama. Get him out of office." He continued, "No, nobody thought of that. We caught him in a lie 28 times at least he is on record. Nobody said, 'Let's impeach him.'"
Some of Trump's loyal supporters among the Republican party also supported his call to impeach Obama. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) said that Obama should have been impeached for a different reason, falsely claiming that he withheld military aid from Ukraine. More recently, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in an interview on Fox News as he criticized Trump's second impeachment, "So I guess next year, I don't know, maybe it'll be the impeachment of Jimmy Carter or the impeachment of Bill Clinton or the impeachment of Barack Obama because that's what we do in Januaries." It's worth noting here that former President Bill Clinton has already been impeached.
Obama is not the only former President that Trump has suggested should be impeached. In a 2014 interview with Fox and Friends, Trump said, "Do you think Obama seriously wants to be impeached and go through what Bill Clinton did? He would be a mess." He also supported impeaching Obama for the latter's decision to pause deportations of undocumented immigrant parents of US citizen children.
In 2008, Trump said that former President George W Bush should have been impeached for the "lies" he told about the Iraq War, which Trump called "a mess the likes of which this country has probably never seen" and "one of the great catastrophes of all time." He also said in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer in 2008, "Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying. By saying they had WMDs, by saying all sorts of things that happened not to be true."